Poetry

Visual arts, music, poetry and other forms of art.
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Heith
Posts: 699
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Re: Poetry

Post by Heith »

Should this body die and die again a hundred times over,
White bones turning to dust, with or without trace of soul,
My steadfast heart toward Lord, could it ever fade away?


- Jeong Mong-ju
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Heith
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Re: Poetry

Post by Heith »

As this is my 1000th post, I felt it need be meaningful. What a strange thing, to have written something on our forum so many times.


--

The Litanies of Satan
by Charles Baudelaire


O you, the most knowing, and loveliest of Angels,
a god fate betrayed, deprived of praises,
O Satan, take pity on my long misery!
O, Prince of exile to whom wrong has been done,
who, vanquished, always recovers more strongly,
O Satan, take pity on my long misery!
You who know everything, king of the underworld,
the familiar healer of human distress,
O Satan, take pity on my long misery!
You who teach even lepers, accursed pariahs,
through love itself the taste for Paradise,
O Satan, take pity on my long misery!
O you who on Death, your ancient true lover,
engendered Hope – that lunatic charmer!
O Satan, take pity on my long misery!
You who grant the condemned that calm, proud look
that damns a whole people crowding the scaffold,
O Satan, take pity on my long misery!
You who know in what corners of envious countries
a jealous God hid those stones that are precious,
O Satan, take pity on my long misery!
You whose clear eye knows the deep caches
where, buried, the race of metals slumbers,
O Satan, take pity on my long misery!
You whose huge hands hide the precipice,
from the sleepwalker on the sky-scraper’s cliff,
O Satan, take pity on my long misery!
You who make magically supple the bones
of the drunkard, out late, who’s trampled by horses,
O Satan, take pity on my long misery!
You who taught us to mix saltpetre with sulphur
to console the frail human being who suffers,
O Satan, take pity on my long misery!
You who set your mark, o subtle accomplice,
on the forehead of Croesus, the vile and pitiless,
O Satan, take pity on my long misery!
You who set in the hearts and eyes of young girls
the cult of the wound, adoration of rags,
O Satan, take pity on my long misery!
The exile’s staff, the light of invention,
confessor to those to be hanged, to conspirators,
O Satan, take pity on my long misery!
Father, adopting those whom God the Father
drove in dark anger from the earthly paradise,
O Satan, take pity on my long misery!
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Mimesis
Posts: 136
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Location: UK

Re: Poetry

Post by Mimesis »

The second verse only to....


Alastor; or, The Spirit of Solitude by Percy Shelley


Mother of this unfathomable world!
Favour my solemn song, for I have loved
Thee ever, and thee only; I have watched
Thy shadow, and the darkness of thy steps,
And my heart ever gazes on the depth
Of thy deep mysteries. I have made my bed
In charnels and on coffins, where black death
Keeps record of the trophies won from thee,
Hoping to still these obstinate questionings
Of thee and thine, by forcing some lone ghost
Thy messenger, to render up the tale
Of what we are. In lone and silent hours,
When night makes a weird sound of its own stillness,
Like an inspired and desperate alchymist
Staking his very life on some dark hope,
Have I mixed awful talk and asking looks
With my most innocent love, until strange tears
Uniting with those breathless kisses, made
Such magic as compels the charmèd night
To render up thy charge:...and, though ne'er yet
Thou hast unveiled thy inmost sanctuary,
Enough from incommunicable dream,
And twilight phantasms, and deep noon-day thought,
Has shone within me, that serenely now
And moveless, as a long-forgotten lyre
Suspended in the solitary dome
Of some mysterious and deserted fane,
I wait thy breath, Great Parent, that my strain
May modulate with murmurs of the air,
And motions of the forests and the sea,
And voice of living beings, and woven hymns
Of night and day, and the deep heart of man.
"We are such stuff. As dreams are made on, and our little life. Is rounded with a sleep."
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Mimesis
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Re: Poetry

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A Spirit Passed Before Me (from Job)
By George Gordon [Lord] Byron


A spirit passed before me: I beheld
The face of immortality unveiled -
Deep sleep came down on every eye save mine -
And there it stood, -all formless -but divine:
Along my bones the creeping flesh did quake;
And as my damp hair stiffened, thus it spake:

"Is man more just than God? Is man more pure
Than He who deems even Seraphs insecure?
Creatures of clay -vain dwellers in the dust!
The moth survives you, and are ye more just?
Things of a day! you wither ere the night,
Heedless and blind to Wisdom's wasted light!"
"We are such stuff. As dreams are made on, and our little life. Is rounded with a sleep."
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Mimesis
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Location: UK

Re: Poetry

Post by Mimesis »

This kind of tone poem is not something that I normally find resonance with, but there is some kind of meaningful beauty to the abstraction in this....

Seeing Double

By Rachael Boast

Waning in the night house of Mercury
I return to her carrying a secret

the colour of a dawn sun above a horizon
of tree tops in a pointed sky strung

with the starlight of slow-moving time
clarified in the mirror where she rises

slipping from one bright hour to another
seeing double not from the corner of my eye

but from the middle looking again
as she couples her fortune of silver downriver
"We are such stuff. As dreams are made on, and our little life. Is rounded with a sleep."
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Heith
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Re: Poetry

Post by Heith »

Fear no more the heat o' the sun
By William Shakespeare


Fear no more the heat o’ the sun,
Nor the furious winter’s rages;
Thou thy worldly task hast done,
Home art gone, and ta’en thy wages:
Golden lads and girls all must,
As chimney-sweepers, come to dust.

Fear no more the frown o’ the great;
Thou art past the tyrant’s stroke;
Care no more to clothe and eat;
To thee the reed is as the oak:
The scepter, learning, physic, must
All follow this, and come to dust.

Fear no more the lightning flash,
Nor the all-dreaded thunder stone;
Fear not slander, censure rash;
Thou hast finished joy and moan:
All lovers young, all lovers must
Consign to thee, and come to dust.

No exorciser harm thee!
Nor no witchcraft charm thee!
Ghost unlaid forbear thee!
Nothing ill come near thee!
Quiet consummation have;
And renownèd be thy grave!
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Heith
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Re: Poetry

Post by Heith »

And Death Shall Have No Dominion
by Dylan Thomas


And death shall have no dominion.
Dead man naked they shall be one
With the man in the wind and the west moon;
When their bones are picked clean and the clean bones gone,
They shall have stars at elbow and foot;
Though they go mad they shall be sane,
Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again;
Though lovers be lost love shall not;
And death shall have no dominion.

And death shall have no dominion.
Under the windings of the sea
They lying long shall not die windily;
Twisting on racks when sinews give way,
Strapped to a wheel, yet they shall not break;
Faith in their hands shall snap in two,
And the unicorn evils run them through;
Split all ends up they shan't crack;
And death shall have no dominion.

And death shall have no dominion.
No more may gulls cry at their ears
Or waves break loud on the seashores;
Where blew a flower may a flower no more
Lift its head to the blows of the rain;
Though they be mad and dead as nails,
Heads of the characters hammer through daisies;
Break in the sun till the sun breaks down,
And death shall have no dominion.
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Mimesis
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Re: Poetry

Post by Mimesis »

Forgive me for posting something that has most widely be known via its use musically. I hope that the inevitable variances in musical taste do not taint the experience of Pelle Ahman as a poet, which to me at least he absolutely first and foremost is.



Horses in the Ground
By Pelle Ahman

The room it unearths
undresses me slowly
I beg them to cut my throat
We crawl through the ground
our bodies are worthless
the gaunt sky is treading oil

Let us dispel the question
and make him ready for its arms
The purging love
that stops the heart
opens the cracks of my aim

Yes i've understood
with noose and with sickle
The beauty we saw down there
We hung from our feet
and bled into buckets
our daughters were holding flowers

Let us dispel the question
and make him ready for its arms
The purging love
that stops the heart
opens the cracks of my aim

I rip up the sails
from the frozen ground

We drift in damp stone
to the sound of blood

The wet mouth is black
its whispering my name
to leap through the rain at dusk

Let us dispel the answer now
to make him ready
for the arms that break
The purging hand
that shows the way
points to our open graves
"We are such stuff. As dreams are made on, and our little life. Is rounded with a sleep."
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Mimesis
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Location: UK

Re: Poetry

Post by Mimesis »

Ethe
By Richard Moult

And so at true mid-Night
Shall I steer this boat forwards
With the comfort of lights receding
And over the threshold between salt water and ethe?

The years remind me, just as Winter pulls the trees
That I have been born before the light
And need to become by crossing over
One key to one abyss.
"We are such stuff. As dreams are made on, and our little life. Is rounded with a sleep."
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Heith
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Joined: Fri May 31, 2013 12:54 pm

Re: Poetry

Post by Heith »

In darkness let me dwell; the ground shall sorrow be,
The roof despair, to bar all cheerful light from me;
The walls of marble black, that moist'ned still shall weep;
My music, hellish jarring sounds, to banish friendly sleep.
Thus, wedded to my woes, and bedded in my tomb,
O let me living die, till death doth come, till death doth come.

My dainties grief shall be, and tears my poisoned wine,
My sighs the air through which my panting heart shall pine,
My robes my mind shall suit exceeding blackest night,
My study shall be tragic thoughts sad fancy to delight,
Pale ghosts and frightful shades shall my acquaintance be:
O thus, my hapless joy, I haste to thee.

(Anonymous,c. 1600s)
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